Once upon a time in Nick Leyva’s world, Pat Hentgen was blue and Juan Guzman was orange. A few years earlier, Joaquin Andujar was red.

Leyva, now the Pittsburgh Pirates’ third-base coach, compiled charts on opposing hitters the only way that was really feasible at the time—with colored pencils designating batted-ball locations off his pitchers. It’s a habit he picked up during his years as a coach under Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog in St. Louis during the mid-1980s.

“Black-and-white doesn’t lie,” Leyva told Sporting News during an August conversation at Busch Stadium. “It’s amazing how, if they’re pulling Bruce Sutter into the hole, what do you do? You’re stupid if you don’t put somebody into that hole. Because of his split-finger, they’d roll over on it and hit it right into the hole, the right-handed hitters.”

Leyva has retired his collection of colored pencils, but he still applies those lessons he learned under Herzog. As the Pirates’ infield coach, Leyva is part of well-oiled group that’s very forward-thinking when it comes to defensive positioning.

Dan Fox and Mike Fitzgerald are the front-office numbers gurus who compile the data and produce insanely detailed scouting reports on every opposing hitter. Those reports are delivered to Leyva and Rick Sofield, the outfield (and first base) coach, and through meetings with their defenders, a plan of attack is devised for each series, for each hitter, for each at-bat.

At the turn of the 20th century, acclaimed batsman Wee Willie Keeler built his Hall of Fame career with his simple, effective hitting philosophy: “Hit ’em where they ain’t.”

This Pittsburgh crew might have driven Keeler crazy. The Pirates aren’t afraid of the dramatic defensive shift, so there’s often a defender positioned in what seems like an odd place on the field. In reality, it’s very deliberate.

“We’re bold in what we do,” Sofield says. “We’re aggressive into the percentages of what we believe is true. It’s a calculated boldness, if that makes any sense.”

It makes sense, and for the Pirates, who will make their first postseason appearance in 21 years, the boldness has produced results.

Clint Hurdle was named Pittsburgh’s manager in November 2010, and he brought Leyva in as his infield coach soon after. The year before they arrived, the Pirates finished last in the majors in team defensive efficiency (.689), according to BaseballProspectus.com.

Essentially, defensive efficiency measures how many of the opposing team’s balls in play (other than home runs) are converted into outs. The stat doesn’t take into account individual player’s fielding percentages or any sort of advanced metric. It’s very much a bottom-line number, one the Pirates look at as a tangible measure of their improvement.

In 2011, they were 25th (.700). In 2012, they jumped to 10th (.714). This year, they’re fifth in the majors through Monday's games (.715).

Center fielder Andrew McCutchen won a 2012 Gold Glove and left fielder Starling Marte is talented enough to one day take one home, but for the most part, the Pirates have a bunch of league-average defenders. By standard measures, they’re 20th in team fielding percentage and 22nd in errors committed. By Ultimate Zone Rating, they’re 16th.

But by the most basic of measures—how many balls in play become outs—they’re fifth in the majors, because of their commitment to playing the defensive percentages.

The ninth inning of Friday night’s game with the Reds was an example—good and bad—of what the Pirates have been this season defensively. With one on and one out, Jay Bruce smacked what looked like a sure single back up the box off Mark Melancon. But shortstop Jordy Mercer was positioned almost directly behind second base, and he barely had to move to field the ball and throw Bruce out at first. Against a normal defensive alignment—or anything less than a bold shift—that would have been a base hit for Bruce.

The next batter, Todd Frazier, hit a slow chopper toward Mercer, who was back in a more traditional spot. He charged and fielded the ball, but threw well wide of first base for an inning-extending error. From there, the Reds charged back to win the game.

“We make errors, there’s no question about that,” Leyva said back in August. “But, we also make a lot of plays.”

Sofield told SN that, during any given series, between 60 to 70 percent of their outfield defensive alignments are set before a game, with the other 30-40 percent determined by in-game adjustments. “You can’t cover everything,” Sofield said. “You’ve got four sectors in the outfield—left field line, left-center, right-center, right-field corner—and only three defenders. You can’t cover everything. So you rotate the three to what we believe is true.”

McCutchen, especially, has freedom to make any sort of adjustments he feels necessary, based on anything from a particular game situation to a hitter’s body language to how a pitcher is locating from inning to inning.

On the infield, everything Leyva does with his shortstop and second basemen is based on the fielder’s proximity to the pitcher’s mound. “We call it The Circle,” Leyva says. “If I want him on the edge of The Circle, we draw an imaginary line from home plate to the edge of The Circle, and that’s where he should be standing.”

Andrew McCutchen won a Gold Glove last season for his play in center field. (AP Photo)

Leyva parks himself in the same exact spot in the Pittsburgh dugout for every home game, and from that spot, he can glance up and instantly know if his infielder is in the right position by his relationship to a spot on the outfield fence. For example, he can tell if second baseman Neil Walker is positioned at the right spot on The Circle based whether he’s lined up with the AAA.com advertisement on the right field wall.

At PNC Park, there’s a camera high at the top of the stadium, directly behind the plate. After every home game, Leyva is emailed pictures from that camera of all of their defensive plays, and he uses those to make adjustments for the next game, or to show his infielders where they should have been standing on a particular play.

“The thing that’s great about it is, because of our success with it, the players have bought into it,” Leyva said. “I had a tough time convincing them. It wasn’t an overnight thing. I had to show them spread charts, I had to show them percentages.”

In addition to their praise of the work put in by Fox and Fitzgerald, both Leyva and Sofield give a lot of the credit to catcher Russell Martin and the pitching staff.

“You know why it works? Because our pitching staff can pitch,” Leyva said. “I sit there and I listen to Ray Searage about how we’re going to pitch a guy. And, ok, if you pitch this guy this way, I can move my guys over here, but don’t miss, because if you miss over here, I’ve got nobody over there. They’ve done such a great job. That’s why it’s worked. They deserve a lot of the credit. We’ve done this in the past and nobody’s really noticed because we haven’t had the pitching staff that has the command and the ability to do the things we’re trying to do.”

This cohesive top-down defensive approach—from the front office to the coaching staff to the defenders to the pitchers—is the biggest reason why the Pirates snapped their 21-year streak of finishing below .500. It’s the biggest reason why they’ve stayed right with the Cardinals and Reds in the NL Central despite an offense that ranks ninth in the NL in team OPS, 10th in in runs, 11th in batting average and is third in strikeouts.

They are committed to this radical approach.

“We’re going to be bold in what we believe,” Sofield said. “That’s the only way we’re going to win this thing.”